North American Distributors Should Demonstrate RoHS Compliance, says Newark

North American electronic components distributor Newark InOne, a subsidiary of global Premier Farnell plc, believes that component distributors in North America must meet the same European Union's Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) law, which took effect July 1, if they are to provide their customers with the assurance they need to meet the legal requirements.
In a number of countries in the European Union, notably the UK, the amount of due diligence that a producer has undertaken to avoid putting a non-compliant product on the market will be an element of their defense against any prosecution. In the UK, this due diligence defense requires that a manufacturer prove that it took all "reasonable steps" to meet compliance. "Reasonable steps" has been interpreted by the UK's RoHS enforcement arm, the National Weights and Measure Laboratory, as having a documented and auditable process that shows steps were taken to verify the information that is collected from a manufacturer's suppliers.

"We believe North American distributors should adhere to the same standard in order to support their customers", says Paul Tallentire, president, Newark InOne. "We have developed our own 10-step due diligence process to evaluate and validate the information we get from our 440+ suppliers. Our customers, design engineers and component buyers, can download a Newark InOne RoHS certificate of compliance at our website for each of the parts we've identified as compliant, confident that we can back it up with a documented audit trail."

www.newarkinone.com